How do you measure student success? Winchester teachers try new approaches

By Diane McLaughlin winchester@wickedlocal.com

Wednesday

Dec 12, 2018 at 1:21 PM

A first-grade student, who often struggled with classwork, had correctly figured out the animal described by a series of clues. But her teammates convinced her she was wrong, and she agreed to a different answer.

Because of a new approach to assessing student performance, her teacher had observed the group and watched how the student had arrived at the correct answer.

“I got to see a nugget that I would never have seen,” said Irene Diamond, a first-grade teacher at Muraco Elementary School. “I was able to talk to her later about how important it was that she was able to do that.”

Observing group conversations is one approach Winchester public school teachers have taken to expand how they evaluate student success. Though Winchester students consistently perform well on standardized tests, the school district is exploring alternative ways to assess performance, ensuring students develop skills needed for the future.

Real-world skills

Jennifer Elineema, assistant school superintendent, spoke with the Winchester Star about the district’s efforts to develop student assessments beyond standardized multiple-choice tests. She said the initiative is rooted in understanding the skills students might need in their careers, such as problem-solving for issues with no clear answer.

“Those are the things we’ve been really wrestling with as a district: How do we get our practices to measure what we know these students will need to do out there in the real world,” Elineema said.

Another aspect of the initiative ties to social and emotional well-being. Elineema said results from youth-risk behavior surveys show students report being anxious, thinking about or attempting self-harm and wanting to die. Social and emotional learning can help reduce student stress, Elineema said, while also ensuring students are excited about learning, feel their work is meaningful and take part in group projects.

The initiative is also tied to a new strategic educational vision rolled out by the school district in January 2018. The vision has three beacons focusing on multiple pathways to success, collaborative communication and student wellness.

Even before the new vision, Winchester had already taken steps to expand how it measured success. In 2016, Winchester was one of the founding school districts in the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA), a group of districts from across demographics looking to identify alternative approaches to performance-based student assessments.

McCall Middle School and Muraco were Winchester’s first schools to participate in the MCIEA, and this year the Lincoln school is involved. School Superintendent Judy Evans and Sen. Pat Jehlen, D-Somerville, who represents parts of Winchester, are members of MCIEA’s governing board.

Unlike school districts that might be under pressure to do well on standardized tests to avoid losing funding or a state takeover, Winchester has an opportunity to take risks, Elineema said.

“We have the ability to show people that there are other ways to measure students,” she said. “We take this as a personal passion project.”

Engaged students

Last month, several teachers from across the district joined Elineema to talk about measuring student success with the School Committee.

Among those attending were Diamond and fellow first-grade teacher Becky Reyalt. Participating in the MCIEA project last school year, they developed a new science curriculum that increased student engagement and expanded their performance measurements.

Focused on animals, the lessons offered students different ways to engage with the subject matter, including a trip to the zoo and a visit from a beekeeper. The students also had a chance to invent their own animal based on what they had learned.

“By listening to their conversations with each other, we learned how much they had learned,” Reyalt said. “We saw things in them that we wouldn’t have seen or probably even assessed had we not watched them creating these animals, talking about their animals, talking to each other, sharing their ideas.”

Muraco’s third-grade teachers, Christina Ulacco and Lynn Mazzocchi, were surprised to learn from a student survey that math was the least favorite subject, causing stress and even tears for some students. They developed a lesson with “pro-bots,” robots the students needed to program to draw specific geometric shapes. The exercise required students to engage and problem-solve as a team.

Mazzocchi said the assessments looked at the planning, practice and the final product. She added the students enjoyed the exercise so much they didn’t want to stop for recess.

“They didn’t quit,” Mazzocchi said. “The perseverance was amazing.”

Sixth-grade teacher Kim Burke did not attend the School Committee meeting but instead created a video demonstrating how her students learn under the Kagan method, an approach to teaching engaging students by requiring everyone to participate, communicate and collaborate.

Mary Elizabeth DeCamp’s high school Latin class was reading “Aeneid,” and she wanted to see how well the students understood the challenging Latin poetry. She said they created double-sided valentines to describe the love story of Aeneas and Dido from each perspective.

Students also enhanced their Latin studies through creative projects, including making picture books and board games. She assessed performance based on how the students related to their project, their interest in it and their engagement.

Melissa Lutchen’s advanced pre-calculus class used a smartphone app to learn graphing formulas. Each student created a graph in the shape of a familiar company logo with mathematical formulas. While she measured the final product, Lutchen also assessed what the students learned from the roadblocks they encountered and the problem-solving skills used.

Many of the skills needed for communication, collaboration and problem-solving are part of the lessons the elementary schools with social-emotional coach Stacey Bukuras. She said she works with students on positive self-talk, coping skills, self-awareness and team-building. She even helps students understand what part of the brain responds to emotional situations.

Elineema told the Winchester Star that the school district allows teachers to choose their strategies.

“Our goal is that students are not just passive learners in the classroom, but they’re excited and engaged with what they’re doing,” Elineema said.